Isak Dinesen, the great Danish storyteller, describes two men traveling by boat to Zanzibar on a full-moon night in 1863. Mira Jama, a much-renowned old man, "the inventions of whose mind have been loved by a hundred tribes," tells a red-haired Englishman "who had been blown about by many winds," that "there are only two courses of thought at all seemly to a person of any intelligence. The one is: What am I to do this next moment?--or tonight, or tomorrow? And the other: What did God mean by creating the world, the sea, and the desert, the horse, the winds, woman, amber, dishes, wine?"

I am captivated by the scene--the warm night, the smooth sea, the creak of the mast, and the quiet voices. But beyond that Mira Jama's statement has for me the ring of truth. It touches the foundation of all that the Bible says to us, for it is a book about man's responsibility and God's purposes. But there is a question which alone is regarded as "relevant" (Mira Jama's word seemly is a much better word!) to today's generation, one "up with which I can no longer put," a question discussed in schools, churches, clubs, and "sensitivity groups" ad nauseam. It is WHO AM I? I protest the endless probing and pulse-taking, the anxious inward examination which assumes that the ego is the place to look for answers, and that the truth will somehow be found in "knowing oneself." Can we not call it plain old-fashioned selfishness if we ignore the possibility of responsibility to others and to God as the road to freedom? According to Mira Jama, "a person of any intelligence" would want to be informed not of who he is, but of what is expected of him.

One weekend three things happened to my teenage daughter, Valerie, which brought home, more powerfully than any lecture of mine could have done, the tragic delusion of modern youth's quest for identity and freedom. On Friday night her best friend ran away from home. On Saturday night Valerie saw the movie Easy Rider. Then on Sunday morning the rector's sermon was on freedom, using Easy Rider as an illustration of a misguided pilgrim's progress. Valerie herself saw the relation between these events, and was awed by the "coincidence," to me not less than providential.

Her friend, whom I'll call Becky, had suggested once or twice that she'd like to run away. She had not been happy with her mother, so had decided to try living with her father and stepmother. She didn't like that either. They also expected her to let them know where she was, and come home at reasonable hours. This was a bit much for Becky, who had attended a school in New York where "we never had to worry about things like getting homework done or coming to class on time." She filled Val's and other friends' ears with astonishing tales of things she had experienced, and took a condescending view of people who were not pot smokers. To her, freedom meant doing what she wanted to do. She had not yet acknowledged to herself that she did not know what she wanted to do. "Maybe the trouble's inside me," she confided to Val. "But I think it's outside. It's my environment. If I can get away from it all, find out who I am, do my own thing. . . ."

Easy Rider is the story of two young men who do just that. They use money made in selling dope to cut loose from their responsibilities and head for what looks to them like the Holy City--New Orleans, at Mardi Gras time. One of them starts out by discarding his wristwatch. None of the restrictions of time for him! He is free. And off they go, roaring across the great sunlit spaces of the West, the warm peacefulness of the South. Neither of them notices that if it weren't for the Establishment there would be no smooth highway to travel on, no high-powered bikes to carry them.

The rector's sermon pointed out that true freedom is not to be found in throwing off personal responsibility. The man who runs away from the truth will never be a free man, for it is the truth alone, sought within the circle of his commitments, which will make him free.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who epitomized true freedom in his acceptance, for God's sake, of the prison cell and death, wrote: "If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses. . . . Only through discipline may a man learn to be free."

Freedom and discipline have come to be regarded as mutually exclusive, when in fact freedom is not at all the opposite, but the final reward, of discipline. It is to be bought with a high price, not merely claimed. The world thrills to watch the grace of Peggy Fleming on the ice, or the marvelously controlled speed and strength of a racehorse. But the skater and horse are free to perform as they do only because they have been subjected to countless hours of grueling work, rigidly prescribed, faithfully carried out. Men are free to soar into space because they have willingly confined themselves in a tiny capsule designed and produced by highly trained scientists and craftsmen, have meticulously followed instructions and submitted themselves to rules which others defined.

I spent some time living with a jungle tribe whose style of life looked enviably "free." They wore no clothes, lived in houses without walls, had no idea whatever of authority, paid no taxes, read no books, took no vacations. But they had a well-defined goal. They wanted to stay alive. It was as simple as that. And in a jungle, which can look very hostile indeed to one not accustomed to living there, they had learned to live. They accepted with grace and humor the awful weather, the gnats, the mud, thorns, snakes, steep hills, and deep forests which made their lives difficult. They never even spoke of "roughing it." They didn't know anything else. They'd walk for hours with hundred-pound baskets on their backs and when they reached their destination, perhaps in a tropical downpour, they did not so much as say, "Whew!" They knew what was expected of them, and did it as a matter of course. None asked, "Who am I?" They asked only, "What am I to do this next moment?" If it were to hunt or to make poison for darts, a man did that, or if it were to go out and clear new planting space, a woman did that. Their freedom to live in that jungle depended on a well-defined goal and on their willingness to discipline themselves in order to reach it. No one could "give" them this freedom.

I lived with these footloose people in their "jungle" environment--a nonproductive member of their community--and enjoyed a kind of freedom which even hippies might envy. But I was free only because the Indians worked. My freedom was contingent upon their acceptance of me as a liability and, incidentally, upon my own willingness to confine myself to a forest clearing where all I heard was a foreign language.

So we come back to Mira Jama and Becky and the "Easy Riders," and their search for meaning in life. It can be found only in God's purpose, I believe, in what he originally meant when he made us. "If you are faithful to what I have said, you are truly my disciples (those who are being disciplined),'' Jesus said. "And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.